


Small Talk

by dancingpenguin57



Series: Our Last Hope [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episoode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), Post-TLJ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 01:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13448034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancingpenguin57/pseuds/dancingpenguin57
Summary: After what happened on the Supremacy she isn't sure how to approach him, but small talk leads to big things.





	Small Talk

**Author's Note:**

> This was written to slot in with "Episode IX: Our Last Hope", but you don't need to have read that in order to enjoy this.

“Hi,” Rey said.

The silence that followed seemed very long, but it couldn’t have been more than half a minute. He had sucked in a breath when she spoke and she hadn’t yet heard him release it.

“Sorry,” she said quickly, folding her feet under so she could stand and leave. “I didn--”

“Wait,” Ben gasped, freezing her in place. Then, in a more controlled tone: “I wasn’t sure you were talking to me.”

Slowly she settled back down to the floor, keeping her back to him. “I was.”

“Hello,” he said, tentatively.

“Hi,” she repeated. She rolled her eyes at herself and then squeezed them, glad as always that he was behind her and couldn’t see. “How… was your day? What did you do?” Her entire face twisted with the effort of forming the words.

“What is this?” He sounded angry. Suspicious.

She hadn’t expected this. “I-- what do you mean?”

She heard the rustling of his cloak and then quick, furious footsteps, as though he were pacing across whatever room he was in. She had the ridiculous fear that he was going to call his guards to take her away in chains and had to actively remind herself that she was safe on Ovanis, and he was half a galaxy away.

Her heart raced for several confused minutes while he continued his flurry of activity behind her. Finally he released a frustrated sigh. “What are you distracting me from?”

 _Oh_. “No! No, that’s not what I’m doing! I just…” How could she possibly explain her intention here, when she didn’t understand it herself? “I mean... is it so strange that I want to talk to the person who lives inside my head?”

She felt him move again. His voice was much closer now, and had less height, as though he had sat down directly behind her.

“My day was ordinary. I woke, I meditated, I studied. I reviewed briefings, I ran lightsaber drills. Then you said ‘hi’.” His tone was a little too efficient to be called conversational.

The sudden change in his mood gave her whiplash, but she felt the need to keep him talking. “What are you studying?”

“The same thing you are.”

This surprised her. “What, the Force?”

“Yes.”

Rey shook her head. “But you already know how to use it.”

“There’s always more.”

Silence reigned again. Rey decided that studying was a nice neutral topic to stick with. “There are these boys. They have the Force too. Well, no,” (she remembered Luke’s lesson) “ _everyone_ has it, but they can sense it. Like us. And I’ve been trying to help them. Teach them. But… it’s... hard.”

She hadn’t truly expected a response, but suddenly he was speaking quickly, his voice lighter than before, and she knew somehow that he had been waiting for an opportunity to discuss this with her.

“Elio is old enough to find his own understanding if you guide him toward it.” She flinched at the casual way Ben said the boy’s name, but if he noticed her reaction he didn’t acknowledge it. “Meditate with him. Ka’jan will need some more practical training. Blindfold him and hold up different objects. Either he’ll reach out with his senses to ‘see’ what they are, or he’ll instinctively reach out to try to read your thoughts. You can figure out what to do from there.”

“Have you seen them?” she demanded. Had it changed? Would she see his surroundings too, if she looked? Was it worth the risk?

“No,” he said, and she finally relaxed. “Just you. I’ve heard you talking to them.”

Rey’s fingers twisted together in her lap. “I always thought you weren’t paying attention.”

“I was.”

* * *

  
“Hi,” Rey said, relieved. She jumped up and moved toward her makeshift desk, careful to keep her back to the place she sensed him.

“Hello,” he replied, as always.

“How was your day?” she asked, quickly but not impolitely.

“Ordinary,” Ben said. “What are you doing?”

She rifled through the pages as rapidly as she could while maintaining a sense of delicacy with the ancient paper. “I’m glad you’re here. I need to ask you something.”

Finally she found what she was looking for and she raised the book in triumph. “See, here: ‘The Unifying Force binds the stars and planets in space and time.’ It doesn’t make sense. If the Living Force _inside_ me is what allows me to sense the Living Force _outside_ me… how do we even know the Unifying Force exists?”

He moved up behind her, obviously looking over her shoulder to inspect the tome further. She could feel energy radiating off him: it was strange, something other than heat, because he wasn’t actually there. But it made her feel warm all the same. Her voice trailed off.

“See,” he prompted, “it says further down the page: ‘To commune with the Unifying Force is to temporarily leave your body behind’. That’s what you’re doing when you meditate.”

She tightened her grip on the pages to keep her hands from shaking and was absolutely mortified when the paper creaked beneath one of her fingers.

“Why can you see it?” She didn’t know why she whispered.

“You’re holding it,” he explained. She placed the book gently back down on the table. “...and now you’re not.”

Rey reached for her cup. “Cup,” Ben said.

Rey reached for her second cup; she grew flowers in this one. “Daisy,” Ben said.

Rey reached for her newly-repaired lightsaber. This wasn’t a test. She wanted him to know.

“I see it,” Ben said quietly.

Finally she picked up the Jedi text again.

“Keep reading,” he murmured, his voice still very close to her ear. “I want to hear.”

She took a deep breath. “Couldn’t you read it yourself, since you can see so well?”

“I could,” he said mildly. Then she felt him move away and heard the rustle of his cloak on her bed as he made himself comfortable.

* * *

  
“Hi,” Rey said.

“Not yet,” he whispered. Her curiosity twanged and she _almost_ looked.

“We’re done. You may go,” he said suddenly. Coldly. There had been a time when Rey would have been confused by this, but now she knew better. Now she knew he would never tell her to go. They would never be done.

The unlucky person who had been dismissed for her benefit didn’t complain. She heard the dual pneumatic hisses of a door opening and then closing again.

“Hello,” Ben said, and the warmth in his voice made her heart leap into her throat.

* * *

  
“Hi,” Rey said loudly, confused by the sound that accompanied his arrival. “Is it raining?”

“No,” Ben called out, his voice oddly muffled. “I’m in the shower.”

“Oh.” Her face grew hot. “Um, I won’t look.”

He made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a snort. “I’m aware.”

The water stopped and she heard wet footsteps behind her, and the ruffle of fabric. A small clatter of sound as he moved something around on a bench, and then more running water.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” she demanded.

His voice was thick and lumpy as he spoke around the paste in his mouth. “Brushing my teeth.”

Rey rolled her eyes. “Yes, but do you need to do that _now_? Shouldn’t you be getting _dressed_?”

She heard him rinse his mouth and spit, squirming at how obscenely intimate it felt to listen to him.

“I have a towel. You won’t look, anyway.” For some reason his casual, unabashed tone made her blush deepen. “You haven’t asked me,” he added inexplicably.

“What?”

“You haven’t asked me how my day was.”

“I was distracted,” she explained. Then, feeling irrationally furious with him she added: “What’s the point, anyway? You never have anything interesting to say. Just that it was ‘fine’, or ‘ordinary’, or ‘as expected’.”

“But that’s our routine,” he said slowly, as if he were speaking to a child.

“Well maybe it’s time to change it. Why don’t you ever ask me how _my_ day was, huh?”

“Because you’ll tell me anyway.”

She crossed her arms stubbornly. “Maybe I won’t.”

She could practically hear him smirking. There was a minute of silence, and then more general clatter as he went about the rest of his post-shower ritual.

Rey wasn’t sure why, but her anger melted quickly. She unfolded her arms and fought the urge to twist her fingers together.

“How was your day, Ben?”

The tap ran again. He chuckled, and Rey began to think that maybe he had a point about this ‘routine’ business after all, because it felt really _nice_ , but suddenly she felt a smattering of water droplets hit the back of her left arm and her entire life changed.

“Sorry,” Ben choked immediately. “I didn’t think--”

“It’s alright.” Her voice sounded as though it were coming from somewhere very far away. She twisted her arm to look at the offending drops.

“How?” she asked.

“I flicked,” he said, bizarrely, as if that were an explanation.

“You flicked?”

He sounded breathless, and more unsure than she had ever heard him. “I flicked. Water. At you. For fun. I didn’t know you’d feel it.”

Through the fog of confusion Rey had the sudden realisation that _this_ was the moment. She drew in a deep breath and turned to face him.

He was gone.

Hot tears filled her eyes. She blinked them away, but they came back again, and again, furiously and unexpectedly for the next four days as she waited for him to come back.

* * *

  
“Hi,” Rey said.

“You came,” he breathed, awed.

* * *

  
“Hi,” Rey said after the elevator doors had closed and they were alone.

“Hello.”

She looked up at him and was thrilled to see that he was already facing her, and the small smile was still on his face.

“How was your day?” she asked, even though she knew. But he liked to stick to routine.

“I spent most of it with you,” he answered tonelessly, turning to look in front of him at the still-closed doors. She did the same, telling herself she wasn’t disappointed.

After a beat he added “so it was an excellent day.”

Rey was suddenly grateful that he had looked away, so he wouldn’t see her straining to smother the smile that threatened to split her face. Her head chided her -- she was on an enemy Star Destroyer in the middle of a transgalactic war; she should _not_ be smiling -- but her heart felt like it was about to burst.

“Mine was good, too,” she replied, when she could trust her voice again. It was steady, and that made her brave. “Though these last two hours have been lacking. So I hope you don’t mind me interrupting your afternoon.”

“No, I don’t mind,” he said, and now there something husky in his voice. Rey resisted the urge to give herself a pat on the back for a job well done.

The doors opened when they reached the top level and he gestured to her to lead the way. She claimed one of the plush commander’s chairs and curled up in it without looking at him again.

For a long time they sat next to each other in silence, facing the viewport. Rey studied the stars, pretending not to notice the way his eyes drifted to her face every few minutes, but after a while she stopped trying to hide her smile when they did.

* * *

  
“Hi,” Rey said. “How was your day?”

“Forget that,” Ben said, looking flustered and unimpressed. “How was _yours_? What did they say?” He sat on the edge of the bed, placing a hand on her knee.

Rey covered his hand with hers. “No one really knows how long it will take. But they’re confident it _will_ happen. There’s no reason why the sensation wouldn’t heal, when everything else has.” She reached down absently to rub at one of her numb feet, as if that simple act could bring the feeling back into them.

He lifted their joined hands to kiss the back of hers. “Good.”

“They want me to stay here a while longer. A month, at least. So they can titrate the amount of antidote they’re giving me.”

Ben nodded. His breathing was slow and even. Too even.

“Will you be alright?” she asked quietly, watching his face carefully. “I know how difficult it is for you to be near her.”

“Balance,” Ben said, faking a smile. “It’s so _easy_ for me to be near you.”

She opened her arms and he gladly moved into them to kiss her. She dug her fingertips into his shoulder blades to drag him with her as she manoeuvred herself to lay flat on the bed, never breaking the kiss. When they were both breathless they parted and she looked up at him, pleased to see that his smile was real now, and that it filled her entire sky.

* * *

  
“Hi,” Ben said.

“Hello.” Rey yawned, smiling up at him sleepily.

“How was your day? What did you do?” He bent down to lift their son from her chest so she could sit up and stretch.

“Well,” she began, reaching out to tickle Finn’s foot. “ _This_ one was unsettled all morning, so I did about twenty laps around the garden, because he got horribly offended every time I tried to stand still. Isn’t that right?”

“Oooba,” Finn said, apparently in agreement.

“We came back inside. Bridget brought us lunch -- you liked that, didn’t you? Is Bridgie your friend? -- and _finally_ it was naptime. Then you said ‘hi’. So now it’s your turn.”

Ben bent down to experimentally lower Finn to the floor, but the nine-month-old wasn’t having any of it. He squirmed discontentedly until he was scooped up again. Rey folded her feet under her to give them room to settle next to her on the lounge.

“How long does this ‘teething’ thing last, exactly?” Ben asked, not for the first time.

“You know this is only the beginning,” she replied, yawning again. They shared a look of mutual resignation.

Rey reached a hand out to absentmindedly stroke Ben’s hair and leaned up to peck his lips. “How was your day?”

“It _was_ ordinary,” he said, resting his forehead against hers. “But suddenly it’s perfect.”


End file.
